Book Information: Pilgermann

He climbed a ladder to reach another man’s wife and gave himself up to her beauty, but then Pilgermann descends into a mob of peasants inspired by the pope to shed the blood of Jews. Alone on the cobblestones, mutilated and unmanned, he cries out to Israel, to the lord his God, to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

He is instead answered by Jesus Christ: "I’m the one you talk to from now on.” Everyday now is the Day of Reckoning and the judgement Christ brings is the start of straight action. Pilgermann hears a voice from within and becomes a pilgrim. Through time and war and death itself , he makes his way along the road to Jerusalem, struggling to find God in the horror that surrounds him.

Edition #1: Pilgermann

"The word according to Pilgermann is a brutish place… borrows from Hieronymus Bosch’s grotesque depictions of hell and the literary traditions of the pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel. It is a novel of ideas … sophisticated and demanding" New York Times Book Review

"Russell Hoban is a maverick voice that is like no other. He can take themes that seem too devastating for contemplation and turn them into an allegories in which wry, sad humour is married to quite extraordinary powers of imagery and linguistic fertility" Daily Telegraph

"A strange and beautiful work, whose mysteries are worth contemplation. Hobans prose is constantly persuasive. Pilgerman is that rare thing – a novel that can be read with profit more than once" Evening Standard